Frozen Desires (Asylums for Magical Threats) (36 page)

a resulting tsunami. Joss is here to try to stop those earthquakes from killing thousands of people. In fact, she’s the reason the 2010 earthquake here was minimal and didn’t do any damage.”

He watched amazement dawn on Cam’s face. “She stopped an earthquake from happening?”

Marco chuckled. “Not quite. We all tease her for the small tremors that slipped past.”

Cam blinked. “And there are others?” He nodded. “Then what about you? How did you end up working

with DEFEND?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “Like with most things, it’s thanks to Neena. She convinced my grandfather—

he was an EM trainer when he was alive—to let me join DEFEND instead of being sent to Southeast Asia to

help with tsunami prevention.”

He stayed quiet, allowing it all to sink in. Cam eventually looked back up at him. “Thanks for telling

me, Marco. I won’t take this secret lightly.”

“I trust you, Camilla.”

He tried to kiss her, but Cam backed away and said, “A kiss could distract us, and we need to start

planning our next job.”

For once, he wished they could forget about their duties, but accepted that would never happen. “What

job?”

She looked him dead in the eye and lifted her chin. “To help find the person who killed your cousin, of

course.”

He loved the fact that she remembered that. “Okay, we’ll do that after we take a dip in the nearby lake.”

“Lake?”

“There’s no running water in this place. We need to get clean, and I plan to have a little fun doing it.”

“Marco…”

“Shh, Camilla. Just think of it as multi-tasking. Women are supposed to be good at that.”

“Are you really going to lump me together with all women?”

He smiled. “Of course not, but I live to tease you.”

She shook her head. “And I still don’t understand why, but that’s one of the things I love about you.”

“Then I’ll just have to do it more often.”

Cam opened her mouth, but Marco kissed her quiet. After all, it was his duty to warm her up before she

had to swim in the cold lake.

And judging by her claws in his back, she seemed to agree with him.

Epilogue

Cartagena, Colombia

Cam couldn’t stop staring at the colorful colonial buildings all around her. Marco had taken her to Old

Town Cartagena for their meeting, and while she knew this wasn’t a real representation of Colombia, she

didn’t care. The bright colors and style of the buildings reminded her of Merida, Mexico for a reason—they had both been major ports in the Spanish colonies.

In the five days since she’d been healed, Cam had spent nearly every waking moment with Marco.

Neena and Aislinn had approved them working as a team—along with Zalika and Jacek—and they had

been given two weeks to straighten things out before receiving their next assignment.

And while they hadn’t heard anything yet from Jorge Salazar, she had finally accepted that Harry

Watkins was now the shadow-shifter’s responsibility.

Marco stopped in front of a restaurant with an open-air front, and he squeezed her hand. “This is it, are

you ready?”

Cam nodded. “I’m supposed to be the nervous one, but somehow, I think you’re worse than me.”

“Yeah, well, it’s been ten years since I last saw my parents.”

“And that’s why we’re here. You think you’ve been protecting them by keeping your distance, but they

need to decide for themselves which is greater—the risk or the reward when it comes to including you in

their life.”

Marco gave a half-smile. “You’re too smart for your own good.”

“And I’ll never let you forget it.”

He chuckled and tugged her forward. “Come on, there’s no point in delaying the inevitable.”

Marco spoke with the hostess, and she motioned for them to follow her. They wove through the

restaurant, turned a corner, and were met with a table full of people, more than half of which look

remarkably like the man at her side. “I thought you said that it was just your parents.”

She looked up and saw Marco’s stunned expression. “Marco, are you okay?”

“They brought my siblings, too.”

Before Cam could reply, a woman she reckoned was Marco’s mother rose from the table, rushed over,

and kissed Marco on the cheek. As the woman started to chatter in Spanish, everyone else stood up and

came over, surrounding them. Some of the Alvarez clan started hugging and kissing her, too. While she

didn’t understand much apart from her name, she nearly teared up at their acceptance—of both her and

Marco.

When Marco finally got everyone quiet, he put a hand on her waist and pulled her close. “This is my

girlfriend, Camilla Melini. She’s still trying to learn Spanish, so if everyone could use English, that’d be great.”

A young man in his late teens spoke up. “But English is for school.”

Marco winked. “Then think of this as a bonus lesson.”

One of the young women laughed. “We’ve missed you, brother.”

Marco’s voice cracked. “And I’ve missed you all, too.”

He made the introductions, and then his mother took Cam’s hand and pulled. “Come sit with me,

Camilla. I want to know what my no-good son has been up to, and why he thought staying away from us

was a good idea.”

While Mrs. Alvarez’s words were harsh, her tone was light. Cam smiled. “Call me Cam. And I’ll tell you

whatever you want as long as you tell me about Marco as a boy. I’m sure there’s something I can use as

blackmail later on.”

Marco’s mother smiled, and Cam knew where her man had gotten his heart-melting expressions. “Deal.

Now, come on.”

Cam followed, but she looked over her shoulder to see Marco surrounded by his siblings and other

family members and knew that no threat was big enough to keep him away any longer.

No doubt his siblings would be shocked to learn of the world of the
Feiru
—they’d been raised human

—but if they were anything like Marco, they’d handle it well. Certainly, one or all three of his siblings

would want to help find their cousin’s killer.

However, she wouldn’t think about that right now. Marco deserved a few hours with his family, to enjoy

himself.

Marco met her gaze with a brilliant smile. He mouthed the words, “Thank you,
cariño
. I love you.”

Cam didn’t care who was watching, and she blew him a kiss. Then she turned toward his mother and

started interrogating her, hungry to know more about the man she’d once threatened to eviscerate, but now

loved with all her heart.

Thank you for reading!

Dear Reader:

I hope you enjoyed Cam and Marco’s story. While the next novella will feature Jorge and Sabrina (you

haven’t met her yet!) and the next full-length book will focus on Petra and Will, keep an eye out for the

Melini sisters and their men. They’ll be back, along with a lot of the other characters in future books. I love it when authors show us how our favorite characters are doing later on, and I plan to do the same.

As always, I’m grateful for all of the wonderful feedback and honest reviews I’ve received from readers

like you. I’m always curious to hear what you think—both good and bad. You can email me at

[email protected]
or find me on Twitter at
@jessiedauthor.
I really do read every email/tweet I receive, and I try to reply when I can! If you want to receive exclusive content (deleted scenes, short

stories, etc.) and updates, you can sign up for my
monthly newsletter.

And finally, I need to ask you a favor. Reviews can be tough to come by these days. You, the reader,

have the power to make or break a book, and I’m asking for your help. If you have the time, could you

leave an honest review?

Thank you for spending time with my characters. I hope you return to the world of the
Feiru
in
Shadow
of Temptation
(AMT#2.5, releasing early summer 2014) and continue to follow the journey of Neena,

DEFEND, and all of the rest.

With Gratitude,

Jessie Donovan

Read an excerpt from the book that started it all…
Blaze of Secrets
(AMT#1)

Chapter One

First-born
Feiru
children are dangerous. At the age of magical maturity they will permanently move
into compounds established for both their and the public’s protection. These compounds will be known as
the Asylums for Magical Threats (hereafter abbreviated as “AMT”).

—Addendum, Article III of the
Feiru
Five Laws, July 1953

Present Day

After five long years of searching, Jaxton Ward was finally going to see his brother again.

Or, at least, that was the plan.

His brother Garrett was being kept inside the mountain under his feet, inside one of the most secure

AMT compounds in the world. Getting in was going to be difficult, but getting out was going to take a

bloody miracle. Especially since he’d had to barter with his boss for the location of his brother. In

exchange, he had promised to rescue not just Garrett, but one other unknown first-born as well.

Taka—one of the three men that made up Jaxton’s team—signaled that he was ready, and Jaxton gave

their mission his full attention. He’d let his brother down once, and he wasn’t about to do it again.

Jaxton nodded for Taka to begin.

Taka reached a hand to the north and drew on the elemental earth particles in the air. Within seconds,

the earth of the mountain started to move. As a tunnel opened in the side of the mountain, Jaxton took out his Glock and flicked off the safety. He was the only one on the team without elemental magic, but he didn’t see that as a disadvantage.

He could take care of himself.

Kiarra Melini stared at the small homemade shiv in her hand and wondered for the thousandth time if

she could go through with it.

She had spent the last few weeks trying to come up with an alternative plan, a way that could save the

other prisoners without having to harm anyone. But despite her best efforts, she’d come up empty-handed.

To protect the lives of the other first-borns inside the AMT, Kiarra would kill for the first and last time today.

Not that she wanted to do it, given the choice. But after overhearing a conversation between two AMT

researchers a few weeks ago, she knew that the AMT would never again be safe for any of the first-borns

while she remained alive.

The outside world might have forgotten about them, but that didn’t make them any less important.

Kiarra was the only one who cared, and she would go down fighting to try and protect them.

Even if it meant killing herself to do so.

She took a deep breath and gripped the handle of her blade tighter. But before she could raise her arm

to strike, her body started to shake. Kiarra closed her eyes and breathed in and out until she calmed down enough to stop shaking. Ending her life—noble as her reasons may be—was turning out to be a lot harder

than she’d imagined.

Mostly because she was afraid to die.

But her window of opportunity was closing fast—the AMT-wide meeting would end in less than an

hour. After that, she would have to wait a whole other month before she could try again, and who knew

how many more first-borns would suffer because of her cowardice.

Maybe if she recalled the conversation between the two researchers—the one that forebode the future harsh realities of the other AMT prisoners—she’d get enough nerve to do what needed to be done.

It was worth a shot, so Kiarra closed her eyes and recalled the conversation that had changed the course

of her life forever.

Strapped to a cold metal examination table, Kiarra kept her eyes closed and forced herself to stay

preternaturally still. The slightest movement would alert the researchers in the room that she was

conscious again, and she couldn’t let that happen. Not if she wanted to find out the reason why the

researchers had increased her examination visits and blood draws over the last two weeks.

Most AMT prisoners wouldn’t think twice about it, since they’d been conditioned to not ask questions.

But Kiarra had gone through something similar before.

The last time her visits had increased with the same frequency, the AMT researchers had stolen her

elemental magic.

Since then, no matter how many times she reached to the south—the direction of elemental fire—she

felt nothing. No tingling warmth, no comforting flame. She was no different than a non-first-born, yet she
was still a prisoner, unable to see the sky or feel a breeze, and forced to live in constant fear of what the
guards or researchers might do to her.

Of how they might punish her.

Dark memories started to fill her mind, but then the female researcher in the room started to speak

again, which snapped Kiarra back to the present. She listened with every cell in her body and steeled

herself not to react.

“Interesting,” the female researcher said. “Out of the ten teenagers, nine of them still can’t use their
elemental magic, just like F-839. Dr. Adams was right—her blood was the key to getting the Null Formula
to work.”

It took all of Kiarra’s control not to draw in a breath. Her serial number was F-839, and all of the

extra blood draws now made sense—the AMT was using her blood to try and eradicate elemental magic.

The male researcher spoke up. “They’re going to start a new, larger test group in a few weeks and see

if they can stop the first-borns from going insane and/or committing suicide. If we don’t get the insanity
rate below ten percent, then we’ll never be able to implement this planet-wide.”